When Children’s Scribbles Hide a Prison Drug

Officer Paul Cabral at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham handing screened mail to an inmate. Suboxone smuggling has changed how mail is handled.Credit
Craig Dilger for The New York Times

WINDHAM, Me. — Mike Barrett, a corrections officer, ripped open an envelope in the mail room at the Maine Correctional Center here and eyed something suspicious: a Father’s Day card, sent a month early. He carefully felt the card and slit it open, looking for a substance that has made mail call here a different experience of late.

Mr. Barrett and other prison officials nationwide are searching their facilities, mail and visitors for Suboxone, a drug used as a treatment for opiate addiction that has become coveted as contraband. Innovative smugglers have turned crushed Suboxone pills into a paste and spread it under stamps or over children’s artwork, including pages from a princess coloring book found in a New Jersey jail.

The drug also comes in thin strips, which dissolve under the tongue, that smugglers have tucked behind envelope seams and stamps.

“It’s become a crisis in here, to be honest with you,” said Maj. Francine Breton, administrator of the Cumberland County Jail in Portland, Me. “It’s the drug of choice right now.”

Law enforcement officials say that Suboxone, which is prescribed to treat addiction to heroin and powerful painkillers like oxycodone, has become a drug of abuse in its own right, resulting in prison smuggling efforts from New Mexico to Maine. Addicts buy it on the street when they cannot find or afford their drug of choice, to stave off the sickness that comes with withdrawal. But some people are also taking it for the high they say it provides.

After Suboxone strips were discovered in two letters, the Cumberland County Jail set a new rule in March that all inmate mail must arrive in white envelopes. That way, Major Breton said, officials can detect the orange tint of the strips when they hold an envelope up to the light.

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Suboxone (hint: the fish) was hidden in this coloring book.Credit
Cape May County Sheriff's Department

The jail also rips the stamps off every piece of mail before delivery because senders were putting a paste made of crushed Suboxone pills on the back of stamps for inmates to lick off.

The Maine Correctional Center tightened its mail policy in 2009 specifically because of Suboxone smuggling. Officials there remove all mail from envelopes before delivering it, then send the envelopes to the “burn barrel.” Any mail containing crayon scribblings, stickers, glitter glue or any “foreign substance” is not delivered.

“We’ve had too many people dry the stuff onto the pages, then get a kid to color over it,” said Capt. Mark James, who supervises the mail room, adding that Suboxone has at times been discovered on a daily basis.

In Nesquehoning, Pa., officials at the Carbon County Correctional Facility intercepted three letters with Suboxone strips under the stamps in January and later charged five inmates and six others, including a son of one of the prisoners, with conspiring to smuggle the drug into the prison.

In February, three coloring book pages, including two depicting Snow White and Cinderella, sent to a prisoner in the Cape May County jail, were splotched with the words “To Daddy” and an orange substance that turned out to be Suboxone.

In Massachusetts, Suboxone makes up 12 percent of all contraband discovered in state prisons, said Terrel Harris, a spokesman for the state’s Executive Office of Public Safety. And in New Mexico, prison officials foil attempts to smuggle Suboxone to inmates about once a week, said Shannon McReynolds, a spokesman for the New Mexico Corrections Department.

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Officer Mike Barrett removes stamps from mail at the Maine Correctional Center; the drug is often hidden behind them.Credit
Craig Dilger for The New York Times

“Typically what inmates will try to do is quarter the pill up and sell it for $25 a hit,” Mr. McReynolds said.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Suboxone in 2002 as the first narcotic that doctors could prescribe for addiction to opiates. Seen as a more convenient alternative to methadone, which can be dispensed only at federally licensed clinics, it blocks the effects of opiates while reducing cravings and easing withdrawal symptoms.

A spokeswoman for Reckitt Benckiser, the drug’s manufacturer, said in an e-mail that the company was “aware that a certain level of Suboxone diversion and abuse exists,” and that it had taken steps to counter it.

To deter abuse, Suboxone contains naloxone, a substance that precipitates withdrawal symptoms when the drug is injected. Suboxone also has a ceiling effect, with the effect leveling off after a certain dosage.

But users can experience euphoria, especially if they do not take it regularly, and Suboxone, whose main ingredient is buprenorphine, is increasingly sold on the street in New England and other regions where it is commonly prescribed.

A Brown University study in 2009 found that only seven state prison systems offered buprenorphine treatment to inmates, and only under narrow circumstances.

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The Windham prison, like many others, has a problem with a drug used for opiate addiction.Credit
Craig Dilger for The New York Times

The Maine Civil Liberties Union sued last year on behalf of a woman who was arrested on a traffic violation while taking Suboxone for opiate addiction but not allowed to continue her treatment in jail. The parties settled out of court, but Zachary Heiden, the group’s legal director, said he would continue to press for Suboxone treatment in the state’s jails.

“If they’re not providing a way for inmates to treat their addictions,” he said, “it makes sense that they’re using unlawful means to get that treatment.”

Others are probably seeking a high, though some experts interviewed said they were puzzled as to why Suboxone would be more sought after than other opiate drugs.

“Maybe some people think it’s a safer opiate to abuse because of the ceiling effect,” said Dr. Daniel P. Alford, a professor at the Boston University School of Medicine who runs a Suboxone clinic at Boston Medical Center.

Or, he added, “Maybe there is some mystique about it.”

Captain James described Suboxone as more “adaptable” than other drugs, suggesting that it is easier for smugglers to manipulate.

William Lawhorn, the director of facility operations for the Vermont Department of Corrections, said Suboxone was the predominant contraband in the state’s prisons. Mr. Lawhorn said corrections officers have found crushed Suboxone in shoes and the spines of magazines. So many people were sewing Suboxone pills into the seams of clothing and stuffing it into the drawstrings of sweat pants, he said, that one women’s prison would repeatedly wash and dry on high heat every piece of clothing sent in care packages.

At the Maine Correctional Facility one recent morning, Mr. Barrett sat at a table in the windowless mail room, slicing open dozens of envelopes. He carefully inspected a photograph and scraped two stamps off a postcard. A card with purple stickers was to be returned to its sender, as was a letter doused in perfume, a technique Mr. Barrett said was sometimes used to try to fool drug-sniffing dogs. The week before, he said, a child’s picture tested positive for drugs.

“Every time a drawing comes in from a child you have to scrutinize it because it might not be from a kid,” he said. “It’s sad.”

A version of this article appears in print on May 27, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: When Children’s Scribbles Hide a Prison Drug. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe